Christian College Blocks Creation of LGBT Group; Georgetown To Join Free Online Education Network

Christian College Blocks Creation of LGBT Student Group. Administrators at Point Loma Nazarene University in California told students that they "will shut down any club centered around sexual orientation that makes it through the club chartering process." Sean Lewis, a student at Point Loma who led the movement to create an LGBT student group, noted that LGBT students at the college are "a suffering population." There is currently an online petition urging Point Loma alumni to withhold support from the university until the administration changes its policy. [ThinkProgress]

Georgetown To Join Free Online Education Network. Georgetown University announced its plans to join edX, a Web platform that provides courses from elite colleges for free to people around the world. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched edX in May, and other colleges offering courses include the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas system, and Wellesley College. The President of edX said, "[w]e would like to have the best courses from the best professor from the best universities [...] Georgetown certainly brings that."  [The Washington Post]

One Week Later, Cooper Union Student Protestors Leave Foundation Building. The eleven Cooper Union College student-protestors who had barricaded themselves in the school's Foundation Building for a week after hearing that the New York City school planned to hike tuition, surfaced Monday. Cooper Union has never charged tuition to its students in its 110 year history. School officials drafted plans to end tradition in the face of a $17 million deficit which ballooned thanks to the global financial crisis. "[W]e recognize education itself is an expensive proposition. The question is who should pay for it? Should it be students who go into debt? Or should it be the larger community especially those who have tremendous financial resources?" a professor at Cooper Union said. [Huffington Post]

Ex-Official at U of Iowa Rehired Despite Sketchy Past. Peter Gray, a former athletics department counselor at the University of Iowa, was re-hired in 2002 despite having been fired from another university due to bad performance and participation in a sexual harassment scandal from 1993 to 1995. Records show that Gray was accused of "sexually harassing students and athletes through improper touching" and that he had "improper sexual photographs on his computer." University officials have not released Gray's resignation letter, and Gray has not responded to requests for comment. [Associated Press]
 

Sydney Hofferth is a Communications Intern for Campus Progress. You can follow her on twitter at @squidhoff10.

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